Pokemon GO introduces lifetime bans for anybody who cheats

All around the world, people have been cheating at Pokemon GO.

With the help of bot services and other tools, some players have been breaking the rules by tricking the game’s GPS tracking. This means that it looks like they’re playing the game 24/7, giving them the opportunity to catch more little monsters than most other players, and the opportunity to power them up to some of the craziest CP’s known.

By doing this, they’re taking over gyms with some pretty powerful Pokemon, meaning that other players have no chance in a battle to take over the venue with their innocent Pokemon and their innocently earned CP.

Although it has been stated that cheating in the game is prohibited, there has actually been no strict rules or any forceful action, until now.

It wasn’t that long ago that Niantic put a stop to Pokemon location mapping services such as Pokevision, to stop players from being able to seek out the little monsters and track down where the rarest ones were. Now, they’ve started to crack down on the security of the app even further, by handing out lifetime bans to those who cheat.

To do this, the game developers have started to shut down some of the most popular bot services, such as Necrobot who stated: “Due to legal action being started against other bot creators and developers (we did not receive a letter yet) the project development will be stopped. All source files/downloads will be removed.”

Due to legal action being started against other bot creators the Project development will be stopped. More: https://t.co/HSyIOoJNSx

Not only will it now be more difficult for players to cheat in the game, with the limited amount of help that is now out there, but any players who are found to be cheating, will be banned from the game. Forever.

The Pokemon GO website states that players will be banned for: “falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software.

“Our goal is to provide a fair, fun and legitimate game experience for everyone. We will continue to work with all of you to improve the quality of the gameplay, including ongoing optimisation and fine-tuning of our anti-cheat system.”

Of course, this has come as a welcome addition to those not wanting to cheat their way through the game, and want a fair chance in battles and taking over gyms. However, the new clamp down on cheating hasn’t had such a warm welcome by certain players…

So, how do you know if you’ve been banned from Pokemon GO?

For a while now, players have been noticing that there’s been issues with accessing certain elements of the game, which is usually due to a soft ban. For example, if the game detects that your GPS tracking is looking slightly odd, or has been turned off it will restrict your usage. It has been known that in these cases, Pokestops will constantly spin and not hand anything out, and Pokeballs will be ineffective when thrown towards Pokemon.

The good thing is, that these type of bans are only temporary, and the player can usually get back to accessing the full features of the game within less than a few hours.

A permanent ban, however, means that a players account has been terminated forever. If you have violated Niantic’s terms of agreement to a certain extent, such as “falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software,” then chances are, your account will be banned.

In this case, users are usually notified by an email from Niantic, stating that they will no longer be able to access their account. If the user feels like they have been wrongly banned, and think they’re in a good standing to recover their account, they can fill out a ban appeal form on the official Pokemon GO website.

A successful appeal resulting in the recovery of an account is rare, and most permanent bans usually last a lifetime. But, it could be worth a shot.

Basically, the best way to avoid any kind of ban in Pokemon is simple… No cheating!

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